A FORMER member of Hitler's elite SS may have indicted himself as a mass murderer after stepping from the shadows to complain about an elderly woman's wartime memoir.
Erich Steidtmann, 92, was offended to be portrayed as a philanderer who fathered a child out of wedlock in the Second World War and launched a lawsuit in a court in Leipzig saying his "honour had been besmirched" in the book A Perfectly Normal Life. But in doing so he has revealed himself to be the last known survivor of the SS killing squads which wiped out the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. Now the battle is on by the publisher of the memoir, its author and Nazi-hunters to place Steidtmann at the epicentre of one of the worst crimes in history.
The story of Steidtmann, now a pensioner in East Germany, only surfaced because he happened to read a book by Lisl Urban. One of the so-called Sudeten Germans of Czechoslovakia, Mrs Urban worked as a secretary for the Gestapo in occupied Prague. She described the occupied capital as a "hotbed" of frivolous sexual encounters, one of which she enjoyed with an SS man she nicknamed 'Eike' after her marriage broke down. Eike was a police officer who, he claimed, was drafted into the fighting arm of the SS. He was sent to Prague from the eastern front for recuperation and in order to document his experiences in tracking down partisans.
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Posted by: Frank G ||
11/18/2007 8:02 Comments ||
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#2
I long for the day when "WWII Nazi hunting" will join the ranks of those who hunted the Psittacosaurus and Oviraptor. Maybe then we can get a life and move on.
#3
And I'd like the people who confined my uncle Benjamin in Auschwitz to be tried and executed for their crimes, even if they have to be pulled out of their nursing homes for the occasion. So there, Besoeker.
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
11/18/2007 10:08 Comments ||
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#4
Hanging the last live one would be a fine damn touch.
Posted by: Thomas Woof ||
11/18/2007 10:36 Comments ||
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#5
Ship him to Israel. They know what to do.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/18/2007 12:48 Comments ||
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#6
This could be very difficult. He can probably force a DNA test, and if her child is not his, then he can concoct any number of tales. There is probably little if any physical evidence that can connect him to any war crimes.
#7
I'd like the people who confined my uncle Benjamin in Auschwitz to be tried and executed for their crimes, even if they have to be pulled out of their nursing homes for the occasion.
Word, EJ. I don't give a damn if they have to be rolled into the courtroom with full life-support beeping behind them like a taxi cab. Each and every single one of these brutal murderers should dance from the end of a rope for their crimes against humanity.
Anyone who doubts this needs to read Leon Uris' "Mila 18". Passages describe how Nazi doctors butchers injected blue dye straight into the eyeballs of young children in an attempt to "Aryanize" them. Other segments detail how men had their bare genitals directly exposed to hard radiation sources in order to investigate more swift methods of sterilization. Don't even try to imagine the agonizing deaths resulting from that.
After seeing what is left of Dachau for myself almost five years ago, I'd be more than willing to personally drag Herr Steidtmann into court for his day of reckoning. The son of a bitch isn't going to get what he richly deserves, unfortunately.
#11
I've got to add that the prosecution of Erich Steidtmann takes on particular significance due to Islam's resurgent pursuit of another Holocaust. Our world must "never forget" but, instead, is doing just that. Otherwise, Islam would have already been slapped down hard.
NAIROBI - Communication has been lost with a Comoran-flagged cargo ship captured by pirates off the Somali coast last month, raising fears of the crew safety, a maritime monitoring group said on Saturday. The MV Al Marjan, with 22 mostly Asian crew members on board, was seized on October 19 as it sailed to Mogadishu port from the United Arab Emirates port of Dubai.
We are worried that the ship has cut communication with the owner and the rest of the world, said Andrew Mwangura of the Kenyan branch of the Seafarers Assistance Programme. This is the second week since it cut communication, which means there are no negotiations going. This is a very bad indicator on the fate of the crew, he told AFP.
Mwangura explained that cutting communication between the pirated vessels and the outside world in the past has been an indication that something bad has happened onboard. When pirates killed a sailor in Ching Fong Hwa 168, they cut communication. That is why we are worried this time round, he said.
Posted by: Steve White ||
11/18/2007 02:08 ||
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#1
These pirates are always after ransom. Of course, they have to get away after they receive their ransom payment.
How on earth do they manage to pull this off time after time?
THE price of a tin of baked beans passed the $1 million mark in Zimbabwe yesterday as leaked figures showed annual inflation had surged to almost 15,000 per cent, the highest in the world.
The Central Statistical Office recorded that inflation in October had gone up to 14,840.6 per cent. President Robert Mugabe's price cutting measures of June have failed to tame the rate.
Shop shelves are empty of basic foodstuffs such as meat, margarine, sugar and cooking oil. Shoppers are forced to queue for scarce goods - including the state-controlled Herald daily newspaper. Yesterday a can of locally-produced baked beans was selling for more than Z$1,200,000 - about £19.50 on the official exchange rate, though unofficial rates will see this worth just 66p - in a small grocery store in eastern Zimbabwe. Many Zimbabweans survive on less than $10 million a month. They joke bitterly that they are "poor millionaires".
#4
True, but in this case humans would have the same problem as overunity machines = you have to put more in than you'll get out, although it may seem at times that all it takes is mere two beans.
#6
Maybe they had an impression you'd accept that kind of arrangement, Zen. Pushing their luck, so to speak, and usually they suggest it based on their 'tell', which is mostly right.
#8
Well, Zimbob is getting their inflation figures up there with the late Weimar Republic, which maxed out at 3.29 million percent per year, or inflating at 100% every 49 hours. Here is a pic of a lady at the time burning currency in her stove for heat:
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/18/2007 15:24 Comments ||
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#9
My Danish grandfather gave some of those gazillion Deutschmark notes. I still have them in my currency collection.
A Japanese whaling fleet has set sail aiming to harpoon humpback whales for the first time in decades.
The fleet is conducting its largest hunt in the South Pacific - it has instructions to kill up to 1,000 whales, including 50 humpbacks. The humpback hunt is the first since a mid-1960s global ban and has drawn strong protests from environmentalists.
Commercial whaling was stopped in 1986 but Japan is permitted whaling in the name of scientific research. Four whaling ships, including the lead craft Nisshin Maru, set off from the southern port of Shimonoseki on Sunday. The 239-man mission plans to kill more than 900 minke whales as well as fin whales and humpbacks, in a South Pacific whale hunt that will run until mid-April. The 8,000-metric ton Nisshin Maru was crippled by a fire on a whaling mission in the Antarctic in March. One crew member was killed. A Greenpeace campaign ship will be following the Japanese fleet.
Posted by: john frum ||
11/18/2007 08:05 ||
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#1
Now where is that Klingon Bird of Prey when you need it?
Posted by: john frum ||
11/18/2007 10:05 Comments ||
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#2
Watch out for giant probes that devastate worlds.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
NAIROBI - Communication has been lost with a Comoran-flagged cargo ship captured by pirates off the Somali coast last month, raising fears of the crew safety, a maritime monitoring group said on Saturday. The MV Al Marjan, with 22 mostly Asian crew members on board, was seized on October 19 as it sailed to Mogadishu port from the United Arab Emirates port of Dubai.
